https://wevershuis.nl/exposities/material-possession

This exhibition proposes material objects as repositories of memory, as artefacts with histories that mark our identities and our place on the earth. The work is produced using cyanotype and etching techniques on fabric. The artist references the unusual memoir of a 19^th century Scottish fishwife, Christian Watt, whose tale of loss and dispossession played out against a backdrop of industrialisation of the fishing industry. The largely unwritten lives of ordinary people often have to be interpreted through their few mute possessions that outlive them: so it is with the Wevershuisje itself.  Using the blue colouring of the cyanotype process to evoke a dreamlike quality, the artist invites viewers to consider everyday belongings and humble dwellings as poetic objects and spaces.

Thanks, Martin Lennon, for the video!

The House

Material objects mark out territory in the world, and give us a claim to existence in the here and now. As “souvenirs” they link the present to the past, the mental to the material.

The humble objects of ordinary people do not usually survive, being considered of too little material value. When they pass, the memory of them is short-lived, and the belongings that marked their time on earth merely nameless items in a house clearance.

So it is with the Wevershuis, a rare relic memorialising a class of people normally erased by slum clearance and gentrification. In its fragility and intimacy, it is a metaphor for the memory, a vulnerable part of the mind.

Without our memories, who are we?

The following slideshows are using photos taken by visitors to the exhibition.